Page 215 - Critical Theories of Mass Media

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200 Critical Theories of Mass Media
Adorno and Debord’s critical analyses. Adorno’s culture industry
outpaces the hopes held by Benjamin as it applies mechanical
production to cultural life with the exponentially systematic extirpa-
tion of the particular and its replacement with the general. Similarly,
Debord describes an image-based society in which the spectacle
becomes a generalizing frame of reference before which we as mass
spectators are invariably numb.

Myths and the media: Narcissus

The Greek myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with a fact
of human experience, as the word Narcissus indicates. It is
from the Greek word narcosis, or numbness. The youth Narcis-
sus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person.
This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions
until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or
repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win his love with
fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb. He
had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a
closed system.
(McLuhan 1995 [1964]: 41)
In contrast to Kracauer’s use of the Medusa myth, McLuhan uses the
figure of Narcissus to illustrate the dangerously seductive properties
of the new space of non-inhibited experience afforded by media
technologies. In his interpretation the media have a numbing effect
upon their users to which they are generally oblivious. A common
misunderstanding of the Narcissus story is that he fell in love with
his reflection knowing that it was an image of himself. It is this
reading of the myth that gives us the modern sense of the adjective
‘narcissistic’ as meaning the love of oneself. According to McLuhan,
however, this misunderstanding detracts from the significance the
myth has for our experience of media technologies. Mass-media
society risks suffering the mythical fate of Narcissus in its reliance
upon its own diverse range of narcotic reflections. Narcissus was
unaware that the reflected face was his own: he became obsessively
fascinated with an image for its own sake. This is the seductive power
that McLuhan highlighted in a manner that echoes (appropriately in
this context) Kracauer’s assertion that the mirror reflections risk
becoming an end in themselves: ‘the power of the image to beget
image, and of technology to reproduce itself via human intervention,
is utterly in excess of our power to control the psychic and social
consequences … the medium creates an environment that is as
indelible as it is lethal’ (McLuhan, cited in Moos 1997: 90).
Despite his widespread reputation as a keen advocate of media
technologies the above quotations show how sensitive McLuhan was

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